Illustrated parts drawings identify a hierarchy of details or assemblies and parts in a manner showing how the details and parts fit together. Illustrated parts drawings may show multiple details such as the exemplary illustrated parts drawing shown in FIG. 1 that includes three details labeled G, H and I. Typically, the details include references or items numbers that are indexes into a parts list where additional information about the assemblies and parts is available. A single illustrated parts drawing can include many details with dozens of item numbers.
It is a common practice to use illustrated parts drawings with task lists. A task list specifies construction or maintenance steps, where each step references one or more the parts on the illustrated parts drawing. For a particular step, a user typically must search the drawing for the parts referenced in the step to view the part and how it relates to other parts. However, searching for the part can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially as the number of parts contained in the illustrated parts drawing increases.
An existing method of improving the usability of electronic illustrated parts images with task lists is to separate the various images of the illustrated parts drawings for each step of the task list and then identify only the details and parts referenced in that step. In this method, the same base drawing is used repeatedly but with only the relevant, and different, parts being identified each time. This method immediately draws the user's attention to the parts or items on the drawing that are relevant to the current step of the task list. For example, FIG. 2 shows an illustrated parts image being used with an exemplary task list. As shown in FIG. 2, the illustrated parts image identifies only the parts or items relevant to or mentioned in the current task list step (i.e., “Remove bolts, washers, and nuts”). Although this method has proved successful for its intended purpose, the cost of manually creating and maintaining numerous slightly modified versions of the same drawing, however, is prohibitively expensive.
Another method of improving the usability of electronic illustrated parts images is to provide an illustrated parts image with one or more intelligent objects. Indeed, existing computer software programs and tools allow for the authoring of intelligent illustrated parts images with intelligent objects and constructs, such as item numbers and locators. By way of example only, an illustrated parts image may be provided with an item number that is disposed at the end of a reference line (e.g., lead line, leader line, arrow, bulleted line, etc.) and that is associated with a link or index to database information about the particular component or part referenced by the item number. Accordingly, a user-click on an item number queries a database and thus allows the user to access database information associated with the item number. As another example, an illustrated parts image may be provided with a locator. As before with item numbers, a locator is also disposed at the end of a reference line. However, a locator is associated with zooming functionality that allows a user to zoom in on a particular portion (e.g., component, part, detail, assembly, etc.) of the illustrated parts drawing with a user-click on the locator. Accordingly, both item numbers and locators allow a user to access additional information by way of a user-click thereon.
However, there are many existing illustrated parts drawings that comprise unintelligent raster images (bitmapped graphics) that do not provide high-level structures, such as text records or graphical primitives. For at least this reason, raster illustrated part images have had very limited functionality in electronic information systems.